


Ice

by osprey_archer



Category: Shimotsuma Monogatari | Kamikaze Girls (2004)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 07:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winter, mused Momoko, as her feet lost contact with the icy ground and her arms flailed for balance, was the most elegant of seasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Inner Voice (inner_v0ice)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inner_v0ice/gifts).



Winter, mused Momoko, as her feet lost contact with the icy ground and her arms flailed for balance, was the most elegant of seasons: pure white snow and crystalline icicles that hung off roofs like cut-glass candlesticks. If only, she thought, as she floated backward in the air, icicles didn’t drip so messily; or if their drips floated in the air, like bubbles -

 _Thwack_.

The hard pavement slammed the breath out of her. Momoko wheezed and then sat upright.

The black ice had not only tripped her: it had ripped the Valenciennes lace on her skirt and broken the kitten heel on her new white feathered shoes. She bought them in Tokyo just last week. Ichigo nearly threw them out the train window on the way back.

Momoko reached with trembling fingers toward her shoes, brushed her knuckles against her ankle, and squeaked in pain. Her ankle had swollen up like a balloon. If it got any bigger, it would drag her into the sky and she would float upside across the countryside.

She collapsed against the cold hard pavement. Black ice was an affront to the purity of winter.

On the other hand. Could there be a more elegant way to die than freezing into a ice maiden, hard and white as porcelain? She would become a porcelain maiden. Momoko arranged her face into a china-shepherdess smile. She would stand on a gilt-trimmed white mantle, very Rococo, her parasol in her hands, and dance every night with the other china figures in front of a polished silver mirror.

Her cell phone rang.

Momoko extracted it from her garter. “Ichigo?”

“You’re late!”

Momoko imagined Ichigo pacing the train platform, gesticulating, mothers pulling smaller children tight against their coats as she stalked by. “I fell,” said Momoko.

“Well get back up!” yelled Ichigo.

“I can’t,” said Momoko.

“Eh?”

“I’m going to freeze into an ice maiden,” Momoko said. She shut the phone and draped herself artistically over the ground.

***

“Momoko!”

Momoko lifted her head from the pavement. She could barely feel the cold.

Ichigo skidded off her scooter and flung herself to her knees by Momoko. “Speak to me! Where does it hurt?”

Momoko moaned in carefully modulated ladylike agony, and batted a hand toward her ankle. Ichigo scooted down, leaning over. Her breath felt like the hot air from an opening kiln, her fingers like heated tongs as she poked at Momoko’s ankle. Momoko’s foot itched.

“Momoko!” Ichigo shouted. “It’s just your shoe! I drove all the way over here and all your broke was the heel of your _shoe_!” She yanked off the shoe and flailed at Momoko with it. Momoko shrieked and raised her hands to protect herself.

Ichigo dropped the shoe.“Your hands!”

Momoko’s hands were a coarse blotchy red. Momoko covered them with her long lacy cuffs.

Ichigo stood. “You’re freezing,” she said, trying to find Momoko’s hand beneath the froth of lace to pull her to her feet. “Let’s go in.”

Momoko sat up, drawing her knees to her chest. She began to shiver. “I’m going to be a porcelain figurine.”

Ichigo gave a last valiant tug, gave up, and dropped to squat before Momoko.“You know what happens to people when they freeze?” she said.

Momoko shook her head. Her teeth began to chatter. She covered her mouth.

“They turn purple, and yellow, and black,” said Ichigo, doodling in the slush with a finger. “And then they swell up, and their fingers fall off.” She leaned forward, eyes huge. “They look like those shriveled swamp mummies.”

Momoko looked down at her feet. The beds of her toenails were already turning purple. Her teeth clattered.

Momoko got to her feet, standing on one leg so she wouldn’t have to put her shoeless foot on the ground. The pavement would put runs in her stocking. Ichigo stood too, putting an arm around Momoko to hold her up.

Momoko leaned on Ichigo. “I don’t need to be an ice maiden,” she said, as archly as she could with chattering teeth. “I'm pure and cold and fragile as ice already.”

Ichigo snorted. She slipped on the black ice and had to grab Momoko to stay upright.

Momoko hauled Ichigo up, waited as Ichigo brushed slush off her coat, then leaned on Ichigo more heavily to drive home her point. “I'm fragile,” she insisted, shivering. “Like blown glass.”

Ichigo helped Momoko onto the back of her scooter. “Like Plexiglass,” Ichigo muttered.

Momoko sat sternly erect as though the narrow scooter seat were a silk-draped sedan chair. “ _Fragile_ ,” she snarled.

Ichigo swung her leg over her scooter and revved the engine. The back wheel kicked up a slurry of slush. Momoko tucked her skirts under her thighs. The lace scratched.

The scooter burst free of the snow. Ichigo’s hair whipped Momoko’s cold face as they flew down the road.

***

Ichigo cranked up the heater in the kotatsu, thrust Momoko half-under it, covered her shoulders with an electric blanket, and stomped into the kitchen. She managed to clomp in house slippers as if she still wore her heavy-soled boots.

Momoko’s feet, awakened by the heat of the kotatsu, felt as if she’d used them as a pincushion for her embroidery needles. She leaned her cheek against the dark blue futon draped over the kotatsu and pulled the electric blanket tighter around her. Being an ice maiden was unnecessarily painful. She only wanted things to be sweet.

Something clanged in the kitchen. Ichigo seemed to feel that making a racket was a necessary part of the tea-making process.

Momoko covered her ears. She knocked her white lace cap in her eyes, made to straighten it - but stopped herself, and rested her head on the table.

“I won,” announced Ichigo, teacups rattling on the tray as she plunked them onto the kotatsu. “I had to hit the kettle with a hammer. ” She stopped. Momoko, peering through the lace fringe on her cap, saw Ichigo peer down at her. “Momoko? Are you asleep?” she whispered.

It wasn’t a very good whisper, but Momoko supposed Ichigo might have lost some hearing to her scooter.

Ichigo sat down, craning her head this way and that, as if Momoko might still be awake from some angle. She jiggled her teacup. It jingled in the saucer.

Momoko’s cap slipped over her face. The lace tickled her nose. Momoko held her breath against a sneeze.

Ichigo looked around, just in case one of her old Yanki friends had somehow slipped in through a crack in the wall, and straightened Momoko’s cap.

Momoko reared up. “Ha!”

Ichigo jumped back, splashing tea all over her fingers. “Ah!” She sucked her burned fingers. “What were you doing?”

“I wanted to see if you could be quiet.”

Ichigo removed Momoko’s cap and smacked her with it.

Momoko sipped her tea. “I’ve decided not to be an ice maiden,” she said. She propped her chin on her hand, her lace cuffs cascading almost to her elbows. “I’m more pure and clear and delicate.”

“Sure,” said Ichigo. “Pure, clear, and delicate as a diamond.”

Momoko nodded. Then she lunged across the table, knocking over her tea, and snatched her cap from Ichigo to smack her with it.


End file.
